


hold me down in the siren lights

by charleybradburies



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apologies, Arguing, Aunts & Uncles, Awkward Flirting, Banter, Bickering, Bisexuality, Breaking and Entering, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Challenges, Character Development, Children, Community: 1_million_words, Cultural References, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Drabble Collection, Drinking, Drinking & Talking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Espionage, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Female Friendship, First Kiss, Fix-It of Sorts, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Historical References, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Interrogation, Living Together, Love Confessions, Military Backstory, Military Training, Military Uniforms, Moving In Together, Multi, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Original Character(s), POV Multiple, Protective Siblings, Reconciliation, Scheming, Secret Identity, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Tension, Spies & Secret Agents, Team, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Technology, Theatre, Training, Uncle-Nephew Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:37:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3426446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-1.07 AU.</p><p>Peggy has conflicted feelings but not a place to stay. Daniel has a guest bed and a lingering crush. Things happen. Words are said. Complications multiply. </p><p>They wake up and they win the war.</p><p>Comments, etc. are greatly appreciated!! <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Pedestal

**Author's Note:**

> Title from one of the most Peggysous songs of them all: Trouble by Natalia Kills.
> 
> I'd meant to post the whole thing before the finale, but alas, I got sick and I've only written a few scenes so far. So it goes.

“That’s enough for today,” Jack says soberly, turning to the pair of agents.

“Same time tomorrow?” inquires Daniel.

“That’s when I’ll be here.”

Jack turns off the light of their office, scanning the room, eyes pausing at the stark contrast between the caution tape and the city night behind it, and ushers the others out.

He heads straight to his car. Daniel starts to head off as well, but realizing that Peggy remains lingering by the door, he backtracks his few steps.  


“You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?” he asks gently.

“I suppose I’ll just take a walk, see if any hotels have an open room.”  


Her voice comes out sadder than she’d hoped, and she isn’t spared Daniel’s notice of that.

“You could come back with me.” Daniel gestures back towards his car.

“Daniel-” she starts to protest, but he cuts her off.

“I got a guest room and New York’s best recipe for tortellini. It’s getting late; you can look for a hotel room another night.”

“Well, who am I to refuse New York’s best tortellini?” Peggy accedes with a soft jest. Daniel offers his hand as he turns back around, but she gestures instead for him to lead the way.

***

She swirls the wine around in her glass, watching it far too closely. A wonderful dinner indeed, but now that their conversation had idled, it had segued to an awkward period of silence at Daniel’s table for two.

“You could have come to me,” he says softly, almost out of nowhere, and she doesn’t tear her eyes away from her wine to look up at him. “You could have told me you knew Stark was innocent.”

Peggy scoffs, practically to herself.

“And what would you have said, Daniel? If I had come to you proclaiming his innocence, with no evidence but my own gut, which this entire agency seems to believe is directly connected to another part of my body entirely? If I had asked you to go against what the chief said to try to put the pieces together?”

She pauses, taking a deep, sad breath.

“I may have been wrong to keep all this from you, but that does not change that you would not have helped me.”

“I could have tried! I could have at least known _why.”_

His voice fades quickly from harsh anger to gentler hurt, and his glass scrapes against the wood of his table as he sets it down.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have helped you prove his innocence then, but I guess we’ll never know what I would have done, will we? Because I never even got the chance to _choose_ whether to help you or not.”

“Daniel-”

“What? You didn’t want to get me wrapped up in all that business? You wanted to _protect_ me? Something like that, is that what you’re going to say? You did a damn fine job of it, too.”

“You’re not honestly going to imply you’d risk imprisonment for a man you didn’t even believe to be innocent?”

“No! No, I’m not. Because I wouldn’t. But you know what? What you seem to be missing is that I would do it for _you.”_

There’s nothing she could possibly say to that, nor anything that would stop her heart from racing or her breath from growing shallow or her tears continuing to gather at the creases of her navy-lined eyelids, so his voice lingers in the air of the room until he pushes himself up from his chair a few moments later. He sets his empty wine glass on the counter, and heads through the living room towards the hall. Peggy watches him out of the corner of her eye, until he stops at the beginning of the hallway and speaks again, and she turns her gaze back to the table.

“You should be able to find anything you need, but if you can’t, you know where my room is.”

She forces herself to look up at him.

“Good night, Daniel.”

He nods, and starts down the hall, but stops again.

“For the record, Peg…you’re still _on_ that pedestal.”

He walks away, and she pours another glass of wine, presses her eyes shut, listens to him crutch against the carpet, and lets herself cry.

***

“What in God’s name is this?”

She startles when she hears Daniel’s voice at the entry to the kitchen, having expected to have heard him coming well before that.

“Breakfast. What does it look like?”

“Peg-"  


“Am I not allowed to cook for you?”

“You certainly didn’t _have_ to, but I won’t say I’m opposed. Surprised, maybe,” he answers casually.

“What, too domestic?” she replies playfully as she’s pouring a second coffee into a second mug.

“No, no, this is a _lovely_ level of domesticity, actually.”

He walks up behind her and snatches a strawberry from the bowl of fruit at her left. Reflexively she thinks to slap his hand away, but she stops herself and simply shoots him a disapproving look, which he returns with a light chuckle.

“Did I ruin everything?”

“Not _everything,_ no,” she says cockily, and turns around to set a plate of scrambled eggs down at the end of the table where Daniel had sat the night before. She gestures for him to sit, and he complies without a word, though not before grabbing two sets of silverware from the respective drawer. He leans his crutch against the counter in the center of the kitchen, and waits for Peggy to sit down before beginning to eat.

When the energy of their banter peters out, they eat mostly in silence, sharing pages of the morning paper across the table. Daniel finishes a moment before Peggy does, and before she can offer any protest he’s taken their plates and silverware to the sink. However, once he’s nearly done washing them, she grabs the closest dishrag and goes to stand at his side and do the drying.

“I’m sorry,” he says soberly as he’s returning the plates to the cupboard, and his hand inches a bit closer to hers. “I should have gone to you first. Trusted you. Known that you weren’t- I was hurt, and jealous, and you deserved better than that.”

She can feel her brow furrow for barely a second before the words sink in.

“About Howard?” she asks weakly, and he nods, and she’s grateful he’s not looking right at her because she can feel herself blush. However, a light chuckle does escape her.

“I’m not really a swoon-easy, week-long fling, diamond-and-gold bracelet sort of woman, Daniel.”

Dozens of unanswered questions linger in the air for what feels like far too long.

“And what sort of woman _are_ you, Peggy?”

“Let me know when you figure it out,” she says with a tone of annoyed jest, and they share a short, nervous laugh.

“Here’s hoping,” he replies, mimicking her tone and seemingly meaning to convey a teasing answer - but when he puts a hand on her shoulder and excuses himself a moment later to warm up his car, Peggy finds it hard not to smile.


	2. Daughters of Bitches

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I had hoped to have the whole thing up before the finale showed but, hey, life happens. More coming soon!

“Morning, Rose,” Peggy tries to say in her usually cheerful tone, but she has no such luck, and the other woman stretches out her arm and pulls Peggy into a short hug.  


“You’re gonna get this sorted, you know that, right? You’ve got this, Peg,” Rose says amiably, and Peggy nods in a weak but hopeful accord.  


“Agent Sousa,” Rose greets Daniel, who’s continued on over to the elevator, and he returns the greeting as Peggy comes over.  


Jack’s at his own desk when they arrive, and he gives his standard grumble of ‘good morning’ before putting down the apple he’d been eating and leaning forward in his seat.  


“Isn’t that the same thing you wore yesterday, Carter?”  


Peggy hangs her jacket up and turns back to look at him.  


“I don’t have much of a choice, do I? I can’t go back to the Griffith.”  


“Right.”  


He turns to Daniel. “So...you picked her up.”  


“Not exactly,” Peggy says.  


“Wait, Carter, did you-"  


Daniel chuckles and Jack wheels his chair back towards him.  


“Did you take Carter home last night?”  


“Not in the way you’re assuming I did,” Daniel retorts, and then smiles. “She slept in my guest room.”  


“You have a guest room?”  


Daniel nods, and Peggy stifles the laughter that rises at the sight of Jack’s surprised and - dare she think it - disappointed expression.

*** 

“Howard, Dottie, Doctor Ivchenko…” Peggy mutters, nearly to herself, as she’s scrawling the names on the board.  


“Okay, now let’s see what we can do about finding these sons of bitches,” Jack growls.  


“I think the “bitch” herself should be of greater concern,” Peggy comments. “She is, after all, the trained assassin.”  


“She’s also the most dangerous and the least traceable.”  


“Perhaps not.”  


“Got something you wanna share with the class, Carter?”  


“Dottie Underwood is - or at least, was - a resident at the Griffith. _I’m_ her mission. She won’t be going too far, perhaps nowhere at all. She may well keep up her act with the other girls.”  


“And that helps us how? _You’re_ not allowed back there - not like most of the girls would talk to you if you were - Sousa and I aren’t allowed above the first floor, and it’s not like we can just show up and demand to see her. You know how that matron is.”  


“Not to mention - we’re _not_ sending Carter straight at someone who wants to kill her,” interrupts Daniel.  


“Right. That too.”  


“We can’t _see_ her,” Peggy says suggestively. “That doesn’t mean we can’t _catch_ her.”  


She watches her partners’ eyes narrow as they look at her with increasing confusion.  


“Hand me that telephone, Agent Thompson.”

***

“Hiya, Dot!” Angie exclaims, bolting over to the stairs once she sees Dottie coming down them. The girl’s heavy suitcase hits her in the side when they hug, and Dottie pulls away.  


“Listen, Angie, I’m happy to see you, too, but I’m really just here to get some things. I really need to get back to my uncle, he really needs me,” she protests, a tear coming to her eye which she promptly wipes away. “You know men, can’t even take care of themselves when they _aren’t_ sick!”  


 _Nice save,_ Angie thinks facetiously.  


“Well, I just wanted to ask you something. See, my fella’s coming to pick me up from my shift tomorrow, and he’s _aching_ to meet some of my girlfriends, and I was wondering if you’d come, ‘specially since, well, Peggy can’t,” she presses pleadingly.  


“You know what, Angie? I’d _love_ to meet your guy, so I'll - I’ll talk to my uncle, get somebody else to stay with him for an hour or so. I gotta go now, but I’ll be there. You get off at five, right?”  


“On the dime! Oh, I’m so happy you’ll come!”  


Dottie leans in for an obligatory short good-bye hug, and races out the door. Angie smiles victoriously and heads upstairs. She pulls off her barrette, and twiddles it around in the lock of Dottie’s door.  


She takes a glance around the room, and sees a make-up bag right on the vanity. She opens it carefully, slips on the gloves Peggy gave her - she was insistent that Dottie would notice fingerprints - and pulls out all the lipsticks.  


“Sweet dreams, sweet dreams, sweet dreams,” she repeats to herself until she finds it. She pulls the replica from her purse, puts it back in place of the other, and heads back to her own room.


	3. Quite the Torch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been edited, since the lovely Anfrelost was kind enough to inform me that there were a couple things that were historically erroneous. (Our comments are below, if you care to see them.)

“Just the grilled cheese and the coffee, then?” Angie says, scratching down the order.

“Not allowed to _drink_ on the clock, so…yeah,” Jack replies, loosening his tie just a touch. As casually as he talks, Angie can tell he isn’t used to sitting on barstools - she can hear the soles of his dress shoes scraping against the rungs at the bottom of the stool.

“Don’t really seem like a grilled cheese kind of man, Thompson.”

“Angela, _every_ man is a grilled cheese kind of man.”

“If you say so,” Angie laughs, and takes the order back. Someone’s order finishes while she’s there, and she thanks the cook and takes it over to the person’s table with her best smile. Another waitress had taken their order, but most people didn’t mind if someone else brought it to them; she checks the slip again when she sets the plate down, since the woman’s got to be in her thirties and it would appear she only ordered a bowl of mac for her kid and a soda. 

“That’s all,” the woman says demurely, and Angie looks back up from the slip.

“You sure, sweetie? It’s getting near time for dinner.”

The woman sighs, and some of her dark brown hair - even darker than Peggy’s, but just as beautiful, Angie notices - falls back over her shoulder. 

“Ain’t got enough money for nothing else. Long as he’s full, I’ll be okay.”

“Fat-head hubby ain’t give you enough to eat?” Angie remarks, and then it’s obvious she’s said something wrong, because even the little kid slinks in his seat a little.

“Guy’s bad news,” she figures.

“Something like that.”

“Ya got a place to go?”

“Uncle Danny!” the little boy cheers. Angie chuckles, but his mother - though a soft smile comes to her face - chides him for speaking with a mouth brimming with macaroni and cheese. 

“My brother’s in the city. He don’t know we’re here yet, but we’re gonna get a room tonight and head o’er to his place in the morning. I don't know when he'll be gettin' home from work, and he ain't never been an early riser on weekends.”

“Good, that’s good. In the meantime, I’m gettin' you a menu, and you’re gonna _get_ some dinner,” Angie says. She speeds over to the menu stand, and slips one into the woman’s hands when she gets back.

“I can’t pay for this.”

“Don’t worry about it. Daddy upstairs got ya covered, sweetie,” Angie smiles, and pats the woman’s shoulder. She winks, and the woman opens the menu and starts glancing over it. “Tell that Uncle Danny I say hello.”

The woman laughs. 

“Will do. Although, while I gotta say he’s a swell guy, I ain’t gonna give no promises. Little while now, there’s been a doll at work he’s got _quite_ the torch for.”

She closes the menu.

“Well, he never actually _says_ that, but come on, I’m his sister. I know him too well.”

Angie chuckles.

“Known a few like that. The best ones are usually the shiest, unfortunately enough. A girl can know a guy for the longest time, and not know he’s still thinking about her when he’s having his nightcap." 

She sighs dramatically.

"You decided what you’re gettin’ for dinner?”

"I'm a sucker for a plain ol' cheeseburger, if that's good by you," she replies, slipping the menu back into Angie's hands.

"It'll be right up, honey."

She slips her pad into one of the pockets of her uniform, and reaches into another, pulling out the ten-dollar bill that had been her - _marvelous_ \- last tip.

"You take care of yourself."

"Oh, no, no, you've already been so sweet. I can't _possibly_ take your money."

"Damn right, it's my money, and I'm gonna do with it what I wish. You ain't leaving here without it."

A smile of acquiescence and the purest gratitude graces the brunette's face, and she opens her hand to let Angie press the bill into it.

"Thank you, Angie."

"You're welcome..."

"Deborah," the woman jumps to answer. 

"Deborah," Angie repeats. "Danny and Deborah."

"Danny and Debbie when we were little. We were a riot."

"Just like this one, yeah?" Angie teases the little boy, winking at him, and he scrunches up his nose at her. She grabs it gently between her thumb and pointer finger for a few seconds, and they all laugh for a moment before she heads back over to the bar.

***

She slips back behind the counter, taking dirty dishes to the sinks and order slips to the cooks before she’s able to get another word at the comically slow eater at the corner. It’s just getting to quarter to five, and he’s only just finished his sandwich. 

_He may have some espionage training, but I’m not sure it’s enough._

“Why are you grinning?” she asks when she goes over to him, deciding not to challenge him on his tactics at the moment.

His grin widens a bit, and he puts his coffee mug down for a second or two.

“It’s just…Sousa’s been sweet on Carter for a while now, and he’s such a goddamned gentleman he’s never said anything about it, but now, I’m not entirely sure he’ll have a choice.”

“Well, you can thank me later.”

“That was your idea?”

“Well, it wasn’t Peggy’s, was it? Besides, I need enough of a distraction that our pretty Russian don’t trip me up, right? I ain’t wearing the right shoes to find out just how badly she could hurt me.”

“There’s such a thing as the _right_ shoes for that?” Jack practically spits out what should have been his next sip of coffee.

“Course there are! Some snug, sharp-heeled two or three inchers. The best have clasps over the ankles, too, to help ‘em stay on when you’re kicking and running and bopping and all.”

Jack shakes his head a good bit more dramatically than necessary. 

“Carter can run in ‘em, too. I don’t see how it’s humanly possible.”

Angie laughs.

“Where’s your evidence that Peggy Carter _is_ human? Cause I'm pretty sure God’s got a little more to do with her than the rest of us.”

“That…is way above my pay grade, Miss Martinelli.”

“Dreamboat with no dope,” Angie tsk-tsks, and secretly revels in the surprised expression that she elicits on the agent’s face.

“I was _just_ saying that it seems very difficult to run in high heels.”

A shout comes from one of the booths. 

“Hey, baby-doll! Let’s get some more joe over here!”

Angie rolls her eyes, but twirls over to the pitchers.

“Decaf, or regular?” she shouts back. 

“Regular as it comes, sweetheart,” the man says haughtily, and she grumbles to herself before picking up the pitcher and plasters a smile back onto her face.

“Well, Jack,” she says coolly when she returns. “I bet you _also_ think you’ve had a difficult life. It’s so naive it’s almost endearing. Tell ya what, find me a sugar daddy who can make sure runnin’ in heels is the hardest thing I gotta do on a weekly basis, and honey, I’ll save up for my own ring.”

“You know what, Martinelli? That’s a deal,” Jack replies in a voice that’s just sincere enough she can tell he’s only _almost_ teasing, and his left pointer finger makes a line from its tip to her nose.

“Oh, is it now?” she laughs. 

“Well, not _now,_ actually,” Jack says, noticing the time on his watch. “I gotta go out to my car, make sure I’m there for you when you need me.” 

He winks and slips off his stool, and Angie cocks her hip and rests a hand on it. 

“Mm-hmm.”

***

She and Dottie step through the door to the alley, arm-in-arm, and she realizes she’s forgotten which car was where, so she turns her head to her left to look out at the street just in view. She can’t tell who’s in it, but the car’s ritzy enough she figures it’s got to be Thompson’s, so she pulls Dottie to the right, and a moment later another comes within her range of sight. Nice looking, but not swanky - definitely Agent Sousa’s, a conclusion confirmed by Dottie’s growing noticeably uncomfortable as they get nearer to it. 

“You know, I’m starting to regret not getting that malt I was thinking about. We should head back inside. Your guy’ll understand, won’t he?”

“Sure, sure, but we should at least tell him we’re gonna be a little-”

They’re close enough to the car that they can see clearly into the front seat even though it’s getting dark outside, and while the darkness does obscure her view, Angie can definitely see the hand with its blood red nails wrapping around to the nape of the driver’s neck and the short, curly dark hair falling to the shoulders pressed against his chest as the woman to whom they belong is mugging him like her life depends on that very kiss (and in a way, well, it kind of does, but Angie’s _quite_ certain that’s not why she’s kissing him so hard.)

Angie draws in a breathy gasp as though she’s never been more surprised in her life - although she'd planned the gasp, she's actually feeling a bit surprised, because they are _really_ going at it. But that’s slightly less relevant than it would be on any other day.

Dottie’s still trying to pull her away, and Angie doesn’t fight against her grasp, but she does keep her feet firmly planted where she is.

“Come on, Angie. We can wait till you see him next and give him a swell ol’ slug!”

“Nah, I got a better idea,” Angie says dryly, and though Dottie’s brow starts to furrow, she doesn’t give her a second to figure it out. She tightens her hold on the blonde and presses her back up against the brick wall and kisses her. To her surprise, Dottie not only goes along once her momentary shock subsides, but she brings her hands up to Angie’s cheeks and pulls her a little bit closer. For a moment, Angie feels sorry for what she's doing.

Angie is strong enough to hold her up a moment longer before she really starts to pass out. By the time she can't hold her anymore, Jack’s at her side, and Angie steps aside to let him scoop Dottie up into his arms. She follows him back to his car, and fastens the cuffs to Dottie’s ankles when he lays her down in the backseat and fastens another pair around her wrists.

They drive very carefully down a set of backroads - well, roads that get little use; in New York one can't properly call any street a backroad - and make it over to the office in a little less than half an hour. By the time Peggy and Daniel make it back, they’ve moved Dottie into the interrogation room and chained her every way they’re able: wrists to the table, ankles to the legs of her chair, and a different sort of restraint that’s one of Stark’s inventions, which keeps her back straight up against the back of the chair.

“Car break down, Sousa?” Jack says teasingly when they walk in, and Angie can’t even stifle the laugh that comes from her when she sees the glare Peggy aims at him.


	4. Mrs Chief Carter

Of all the places her acting skills could have brought her, she’d never even thought of this. 

A hidden government facility, watching - _assisting_ \- an interrogation. Of a Russian spy who’d been raised from childhood to kill ruthlessly and chain herself to her bed at night in a notably not-sexy way (she’d gone with a girl at one point who used to like cuffing herself to the poles of her headboard when they were getting their kicks, but the marks on Dottie’s bedpost were definitive evidence that she indeed was a different sort of gal). Not to mention, a Russian spy who, coincidentally, lived down the hall from her. Or at least had. Angie seriously doubted she’d still be a resident of the Griffith after all this jazz was said and done.

Thompson exudes confidence; even his stance, leaning back in the chair across from Dottie, arms crossed in front of his chest, fills the interrogation room with his confidence. Well, it's closer to arrogance, but as long as she’s not saying it to anyone she won’t deny that she actually finds it sort of sexy. Sort of. So she’ll call it confidence.

She takes advantage of the fact that Peggy and Daniel are reluctant to stand within a foot of one another - Angie had the feeling that if they _were_ to touch each other they’d probably never stop, so it was probably better that they were wary - and scoots even closer to Peggy.

“What’s the dope on Agent Pretty Boy?” she whispers, and Peggy leans towards her.

“Jack?”

Angie nods.

“Well, what do you mean?” Peggy says with some hesitancy.

“You know, what’s his story? His deal? And where on earth did he get that flashy suit?”

Peggy chuckles, and Angie presses on, though she's not entirely sure why.

“All I know is that he’s a hotshot with a swanky car, a grandma he calls Gam-Gam, and an affection for grilled cheese, and that he doesn’t understand how women get around in heels.”

“That’s more than I know,” Peggy replies, a minute expression of surprise starting to crease her face.

“You work with him.”

“I’ll have you know, I pay as little attention to Jack Thompson as I need to.”

Angie opens her mouth to talk again, but is interrupted.

“Should I be concerned, ladies?” Sousa asks playfully, having noticed they’d moved a bit farther away from him, and they answer in fractured unison.

“No!”

“Possibly!”

“English!” Angie exclaims, tapping her wrist for a gently offended slap; Peggy chuckles.

“What? I vowed to be honest to him!”

“Last time I checked, that wasn’t in the vows.”

Peggy rolls her eyes.

“Angie, don’t be dramatic.”

"Honey, drama pays my bills."

Peggy raises an eyebrow.

"Well, not now it doesn't. But it will!"

Peggy turns towards the male agent at her other side, who’s still trying to stifle his own laughter.

“At ease, Daniel. Nothing to fret about, just girls’ things.”

He nods gently. 

“Just checking.”

“I’m tellin’ you," an exacerbated Dottie yelps pleadingly. "I don’t know what you’re talking about! I studied Russian in school, but I _don’t_ know anything about any Russians that I didn’t hear in school or in a movie theater!”

“Really? Not even anything about the war? Too busy twirling around on your pretty little toes to wonder how the heroes on the front lines were doing?” 

“Oh, now you’re just trying to get a rise out of me. I don’t want to criticize but it’s quite unprofessional.”

Jack shrugs.

“Well, if I’m trying to get a rise out of you, it’s working.”

Dottie scoffs primly.

“You’re quite the pistol, aren’t you?” she says bitterly, as Jack pushes himself up from his seat and turns to leave.

“At least I’m not a broad bein’ booked.”

“Hey! We had a deal!” she shouts when he's putting a hand on the door.

“You didn’t tell me anything, Miss Underwood.”

“But I talked!”

“Whined is more like it.”

“Please, just...tell me where Angie is!”

His voice gets deeper this time, and Angie’s heart skips a beat.

“Miss Martinelli…is under _my_ protection.”

It doesn’t seem sufficient for Dottie, but neither she nor Jack say anything else.

He keeps his swagger until the door’s fully closed behind him, and then he leans against it languidly and sends a sigh and a frustrated look in Daniel’s direction. Peggy smiles gently.

“Don’t feel badly about it. No matter what we do, she’s going to take a long time to break, Jack.”

“We might not _have_ that time.”

“We _might_ not have the time, but we _don’t_ have a choice.”

“Carter-” he starts to protest, but she stops him, and Angie has to stop herself from physically stepping away from the tension.

“You saw that little girl in Belarus, how well she’d been trained even by that age, how much damage she could do. Dottie - or whatever her given name was - has had more than twenty years of the very same indoctrination that made that little girl so capable. She’s been trained to withstand torture, Jack. A proper American interrogation is gravy for her.”

All of their breaths are deep now.

“And what do you suggest we do, Carter?”

His voice is angrier than she’d like, his glare at Peggy too aggressive.

“Haven’t figured that out just yet,” Peggy replies in a tone similar to his.

His expression drops even more, and through his too-thin blue button-up Angie can tell that the muscles in his chest contract when he pushes himself fully up onto his feet.

“Tell me when you do. _I’m_ gonna go get a drink.”

Some of the tension in the room dissipates as he starts walking away, but it doesn’t feel at all right to Angie. She purses her lips anxiously for a second, and then she just can’t help herself. 

She darts past him, going to the coat rack behind Peggy’s desk and yanking the tan coat off of it, slinging it onto her shoulders, and then heading over to the office exit.

Jack sees her momentarily as he rounds his way over to his office after turning out of the hallway; Peggy comes to stand at the end of the hall, a questioning expression accompanying her crossed arms. 

Jack walks over to her at a pace no different than usual, and when he gets there she tries to decipher his expression, but she can’t because he just…looks at her. Like he’s so unsure what to think or feel that he isn’t even thinking at all.

“I’ve had quite the day, too, Agent Pretty Boy. That a problem?” she says after a moment, her voice surprisingly soft. She sees peripherally that Peggy’s expression hasn’t changed, and Angie realizes she’d talked so quietly that she hadn’t heard.

“No,” he replies, but he immediately turns jerkily towards Peggy.

“Gonna shoot me if I take me some company?”

“No, but if you bring her back in any way harmed or debauched, you _won’t_ be waking up tomorrow.”

“Understood, Mrs Chief Carter,” he salutes; his voice starts out tense then turns teasing, and Peggy seems to realize that, as she only rolls her eyes in response.

“Although, it wouldn’t be Mrs _Carter,_ would it? It would be-"

“Go get your drink, Jack,” she cuts him off, and heads back towards the interrogation room, and Jack opens the door and gestures for Angie to pass through.

***

The bar’s less than two blocks away, but Jack’s even more awkward walking down the street. Trying both to be a gentleman by acting a proper escort, and to avoid touching her anywhere but her shoulders - and never for more than a couple seconds - doesn’t bode particularly well with street traffic. She doesn’t mind, though, since she hasn’t made up her mind about him yet. It was hard to know what to think of someone when the first time you met them was when they arrested your best friend. Not to mention, he’d been quite the jerk to Peggy in the past. He seemed to be getting over it, but that alone didn’t make “you’re really so much better at that kind of thing” irrelevant. Let alone anything else. Although, apparently he’d been less of a jerk when they’d gone to Russia. Getting beat by both a big girl and a little girl at the same time must change a man.

She’s familiar with counters - she spends so much of her time at the Automat behind one, it makes her feel more comfortable to sit at one when she goes out, almost like she’s got a clue what she’s doing there. When she darts towards the end of the counter in this bar, she can tell that Jack had been planning on getting a table, but he doesn’t say anything - just shrugs a bit and follows her over, reaching over to take off her coat and slinging it over the back of her tall stool before either of them has even said a word. She slides up onto the seat, and hears a whistle that makes her aware of her dress’s slim fit and the hemline above her knees.

She pretends she doesn’t hear, but the next whistle is louder, more aggressive. She’d rather not have to say anything, but - 

“What do you think you’re whistlin’ for?” Jack’s voice is angry again, and still she tries to keep her gaze straight, looking at the busy bartender as though she were wishing he’d come over just then.

The guy he’d barked at gets offended, and his scoff is almost a growl, and it makes her shiver.

“Get a load a’ you. You’s the guy who brought his girl out all dolled up, who are you to snap your cap at me for noticin’?”

Jack reaches inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and Angie’s entire body tenses up. 

“Well, wise guy, all you need to know about me is that I got license to kill, and I ain’t afraid to use it.”

He chucks what she hopes is his fake FBI ID over to the guy, and she turns slightly so that she can see the guy’s face contort with his newfound fright.

The ID is thrown back to Jack a moment later, and Angie can tell that he shows off his gun when he takes his seat, since it’s holstered at his waist and she sees him push the left side of his jacket back. He puts a gentle, tentative pair of fingers at her wrist, visibly reticent to push what he's assuming her boundaries to be. Her skin craves a little more touch; her conscience isn't entirely sure what she's doing here in the first place.

“You okay?”

“Havin’ a gas,” she deadpans, and he smiles at her. The bartender serves them quickly, and they fall into conversation more easily than she expected. 

“So, all that about about your grandmother. Was that true?”

Angie’s laugh spits out what of her drink had been in her mouth, and when she looks back up she can see Jack blush.

“Sorry,” he says gently, and she retorts without a thought, “should be.”

Then _he_ laughs, and _she_ blushes. 

“No, no, it’s not,” she says, a little sadly. “When I - when I, uh, told my Gran I was going to be an actress...she told me that I was cock-eyed, a cookie signing up for a career as a call girl.”

Both of their faces fall, and even when she stops talking, he remains silent. 

“Could have used _that_ to fool you boys instead, but then I would have started crying for real.”

She downs the rest of her drink, and pushes the glass closer in on the bar. 

“And yours? Do you really call her Gam-Gam?” she returns a little teasingly, and he chuckles.

“Oh, everyone who’s met her in the past forty years calls her Gam-Gam. She’s never even told us grandkids what her real name is, but the minute my brother was born, Gam-Gam she was.”

He takes another swig, smiling. 

“There an Agent Thompson in ‘ere?” the bartender asks loudly, and Jack excuses himself to rush over to the phone. He’s turned towards her when he grabs the phone and leans against the wall of the bar; she sees him affirm something to the person on the other end, and expectantly slips her coat back on.

***

He feels like a getaway driver. Hell, he _is_ a getaway driver. Sure, Stark wasn’t about to be voted _Upstanding Citizen of the Year 1946,_ but this _was_ still his property. He’d been pretty close with Peggy, but would he be comfortable with something like this - even as a last resort? And what if Dottie actually did escape? Who knew how much of Stark’s stuff she could get into before the SSR even knew she’d gotten out?

Maybe he was overreacting. This _had_ been Peggy’s idea, after all. It wasn’t like Thompson had just up and said ‘let’s stash the deadly dame at Stark’s place’. Peggy had orchestrated the whole situation, down to keeping Dottie from knowing that she and Angie were there. 

Besides, they’d only been gone ten minutes. Per Daniel’s own scant knowledge of Stark, it probably took that long just to get to the _regular_ basement. 

He takes a deep breath, and gives himself a moment to look around his car. Peggy’d redone her lipstick that evening after they got back to the office, and she’d left the tube of it in the compartment between the driver and passenger seats. The sight of it makes him feel warmer inside than was probably reasonable; he’d felt a pang of sadness earlier, washing the faint smears of it off his face and that one little bit on his neck, uncertain he’d ever have to do so again.

He doesn’t have to remember it long, since the trio returns just after he starts wondering whether Peggy would agree to stay over another night. He could probably sell that he really liked her eggs, couldn’t he? They _had_ been very good, and as long as he avoided saying that he’d very much enjoyed imagining stealing the strawberries from her fruit salads for a long, long time…

Peggy tends not to let men open doors for her, and Thompson doesn’t bother trying to change that, but Daniel is a little surprised at the willingness with which he opens Angie’s door. She immediately scoots all the way over so that he can get in right after her, and Daniel wonders what exactly conspired while they were out for their drinks. 

“How sure are you that this is gonna work, English?” Angie asks, in her usual upbeat voice, before Daniel gets a chance to inquire as to how their mission had gone.

Peggy shrugs.

“I do believe her priorities - Leviathan’s priorities - will change after a couple of days in the dark.”

“And you got that device Stark made for the chamber and everything?”

Daniel’s brow furrows, and Peggy pulls some sort of handheld thingmabob out of her purse. Angie reaches forward and takes it from her hand, and instead of being the least bit annoyed, Peggy just smiles and turns around. Angie holds a button at one end of the device, and a light on it flashes for a few seconds before an image comes up on the screen in the middle of it - a moving picture. 

“Holy mackerel!” she exclaims, in unison with Peggy’s “bloody hell!” 

“That’s incredible.”

Jack leans a little closer, squinting at the screen.

“So, right now she’s…what _is_ she doing?”

“Wait, this shows her?” Daniel realizes, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Peggy nodding, so he looks back at her.

“Howard made it. There’s a set of cameras inside the room, video cameras, and they keep track of her. There’s a big system for it, that he tried to explain to me once, but I didn’t understand half the words he was saying, so I don’t really know how it works, but it tracks where she is, and the camera that’s got the clearest view of her sends it to this somehow.”

“How on-"

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Perhaps when Howard gets back I’ll ask him.”

“He’ll still be a fugitive when he gets back, Carter. You know that, right?” Jack says pointedly.

“Not if we prove him innocent first,” she says sternly, and Jack seems to know better than to challenge her. 

The drive back to the SSR feels shorter than the drive out, and Daniel’s grateful. They all go back inside to make doubly sure everything is in order, and as Peggy locks up behind them, Jack offers - shockingly gently - to escort Angie back to the Griffith. Peggy looks a bit wary at the suggestion, but doesn’t say a thing; Angie doesn’t jump on the offer, but she tacitly agrees, and hugs Peggy good-bye. She shares a cordial wave with Daniel, and he and Peggy stand by the door and watch them walk off for a moment, laughing when Jack’s arm, quite awkwardly, graces Angie’s back as he helps her into the passenger seat. 

“You know, it really _is_ quite late,” Peggy says softly when they drive off, not even looking at him. 

He gestures dramatically towards his car.

“Get in, Mrs Chief Carter,” he says, almost blithely, and she gasps, a smile shining through her expression.

“Don’t you dare start with me,” she scolds, raising a finger at him to accentuate her point, but it's not at all harsh, and she's laughing at the same time.

She presses a kiss to his cheek before proceeding over to the passenger door of his car, and when he takes his seat and looks over at her fond expression, the world feels like a different place.


	5. The March Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: John Philip and Helen Sousa are / were real people. I've used my knowledge of their existence to add to a backstory for Daniel, but obviously their identities in this fic are not true to life. I do not purport that events in this fic referencing or involving those people are historically accurate, but as many facts about them that I am able to gather will indeed be accurate. (i.e. the March King title, Helen being his third child, etc.)

The suitcase of Peggy’s things that Angie had brought her seems quite heavy, but of course she doesn’t give Daniel a chance to even dream of carrying it for her. Somehow, he doesn’t really mind; he probably wouldn’t have been able to even lift it. It was probably for the best that she’d never expect him to. It was harder to feel like he was falling short of her expectations when the expectations weren’t too high to reach. There’d been only one other girl since the damned barricade…and he’d failed _her_ expectations with flying colors. 

It was hard to be a gentleman when you could barely walk, let alone open doors. 

It was easier when the woman walking at your side goes first to open the door for you. Peggy Carter, of course, was one such woman. She does it so thoughtlessly that Daniel only gives a standard pronouncement of thanks as he passes into the lobby of his building.

“‘Nother late night, Danny boy?” Ricky, the receptionist asks casually, and Daniel’s first response is a light chuckle.

“You got no idea, Little Ricky,” he says with a smile.

“Didja catch that broad ya were after?”

“Which one?” Peggy says jokingly, then turns her head downward, laughing into herself with just half a glance in Daniel's direction. 

“Get a load of you, gettin’ all smart,” he teases before looking back at Ricky.

“Both, actually,” Daniel says easily, and Peggy’s little self-satisfied grin, even out of the corner of his eye, is so precious that he can acutely feel the joy ballooning up in his chest.

“Ain’t that swell!” Ricky exclaims. “‘Bout time ya had a really good day. And a really good girl.” 

He winks at Peggy.

“Well, I wouldn’t say _really_ good,” she quips, feigning an expression of uncertainty, and they all laugh.

“Catch ya later, Ricky,” Daniel says, because he can feel a blush starting to creep into his cheeks, and Peggy gives a wave before going over and pressing the button for the elevator. It was nights like this he was particularly thankful for it. Most apartment buildings didn’t have them, but this building not only had two of them - one each at the East and West entrances, respectively - but offered discounted prices on their flats for veterans, which were even lower for those who had been injured in war, and an assurance to every veteran that even if they were to lose their job, they would not lose their flat. It wasn’t the sort of place where he was looked down on for his injury.

“I meant to ask,” Peggy starts after Daniel turns on the light, as she sets her suitcase down. “That portrait, on the wall in your living room?”

“What about it?”

By some miracle, she lets him help her out of her coat. He hangs it on the coat rack and pulls off his own.

“That’s the American March King, isn’t it?”

“The March King, you mean?” he says, a bit teasingly.

“There’s a British March King as well, you know,” she retorts, her voice feigning more bitterness than her body language would indicate.

“Alford, yeah. Heard of him. And yes, the portrait is of…his American counterpart. John Philip Sousa was my grandfather.”

“Was he really?” 

Daniel nods, a bit more proudly than usual, seeing that she knows quite well whom they’re discussing.

“My mother, Helen, was his third child.”

He goes to the kitchen, filling a kettle and putting it on the stove. Peggy follows him over and takes a seat at the table.

“It’s odd that you have his name, then, no?”

Daniel pauses, turning to face her and leaning back against the counter so that he remains standing as he does so.

“My father only stuck around long enough to have a pair of kids. He ditched, and my mother changed all of our names. She married again, but she didn’t change hers then, nor did my stepfather properly adopt either my sister or I.”

“Do you get on with your stepfather?”

“Well enough.”

He chuckles.

“Better now than when I was young. I did a lot of yelling “you’re not my father! you can’t tell me what to do!” It didn’t go over well.”

“I wouldn’t imagine so,” Peggy smiles. 

“Oh, it was even worse with my sister. Debbie didn’t let _anyone_ tell her what to do.”

He can’t help his face from falling.

“Wish she were more like that now.”

“What is she like now?” Peggy asks, very gently, turning herself in her chair so that her entire body faces him. He purses his lips for a moment.

“Scared,” he replies. “She’s scared. She’s got a husband who treats her like a doormat and turns her into a punching bag when another man whistles at her on the street. She’s got the cutest little kid - not that I’m biased, of course - who she’d drown the entire world to protect, and a heart of gold that his father’s convinced her isn’t worth saving. And she’s so enamored with him, and everyone is so convinced that his behavior is normal or acceptable, that I can’t do a damn thing about it.”

He can tell that he’s about to cry, and he instinctually presses his teeth against his tongue, stopping himself. Peggy extends her hand, slipping hers into his, and he realizes that he knows better than pushing her away. He’d be craving her touch even if he didn’t need to be comforted - he may as well let her comfort him. 

“I’m sure there’s _something_ that can be done for them. It’s just that no one has thought of it yet,” she says, and her voice is infinitely more soothing than the liquor that usually follows his rumination about his sister’s situation. “Even if she’s reluctant to allow us to help.”

“You can’t help someone who won’t let you help them, Peggy.”

“No, but you forget just how persuasive I can be.”

“If anyone’s holding a gun to his head or kicking his face in, it’s gonna be me.”

“That _wasn’t_ what I meant to imply.”

Daniel’s brow furrows, and she smirks a tiny little smirk for a second or two. 

“I got to Spider Raymond, didn’t I? Dottie got to me, Angie got to Dottie, our coworkers unintentionally gave me quite a good bit of information…”

Realization dawns on him, and though he meets her suggestive look with a disapproving one, he laughs, and squeezes her hand a bit tighter.

“We’ll find some way to help her, and her little boy,” Peggy says reassuringly, and he nods, less out of reflex than of belief.

The kettle starts to boil, and he startles. Peggy giggles, and the sound of it is so sweet that he doesn’t mind at all that he’s what she’s laughing at.

***

They haven’t talked for nearly twenty minutes, and Daniel’s surprised at how okay he feels with that. It’s later than they really should have stayed up, but there’s still a radio show on and Peggy’s humming some of the music that the jockey is playing. He can barely hear her, but he can feel the vibrations, rippling gently against the top of his chest where she’s laid her head. She’s comfortable enough to have pulled her legs up onto the couch next to her, her mug of tea cradled in her lap, no longer steaming, and his arm is wrapped around her shoulders. Every once in a while he’ll trace gentle circles with his fingertips, but mostly he just lets it rest against her.

And it feels so, so right. Even more right than he could have expected.

They haven’t even kissed again, and he’s almost afraid to - he knows all too well that he’s loath enough to let her go with just an arm around her. If they were to kiss, let alone like they had earlier, in the car - Hell, they just may end up late for work on Monday.

Not that that’s likely to keep them from it. It certainly doesn’t seem like it, cuddled here on his (their?) couch, neither of them fully dressed any longer, Peggy leaning her warm body up against his…

“What is your mother like?”

“Hmm?”

“You said - or at least, implied - that you were raised mostly by your mother. Are you close to her?”

Daniel shrugs a little.

“We’re not as close as we used to be. She’s got a lot of expectations and…neither I nor Debbie have really lived up to them. But, um, yes, she did raise us. She met Cliff, our stepfather, when I was nine, and he was around for a while before they married. I was, I think, fifteen, when they did get married. Mom wanted to make certain he was gonna stick around even after she had another kid, was worried she’d be getting old and he’d get tired of her, want a “nice skinny blonde broad”. She’d gotten a degree, she’d bought a house herself, she’d practically raised us all herself - she didn’t want a guy who didn’t look at her as an equal and think of her as a soulmate. Cliff, though, he’d just say 'Helen, you’s the love of my life. I ain’t gonna get up off my ass to screw no cookie when I gots the world puttin’ mashed potatoes on my kitchen table.' Even in the end, she mostly agreed to marry him because…”

He laughs, and Peggy moves a couple inches away, smiling at him as she waits to hear.

“There was this Father-Daughter dance at Debbie’s school, and she was so worked up about it, since everyone at her school was saying that Cliff couldn’t count, even though he’d been around for years, since our parents weren’t married. She yelled at our mom about it, who said it wasn’t a good enough excuse to marry someone, I hid in my room while Cliff tried to calm them down. Later that night, Debbie ran off to a friend’s house, and I, um, sat on the stairs and spied on my parents in the living room as Cliff gave off this really swell monologue about love and taking chances and family and things like that, said he’d rather change his own name than force her to take his…my mom broke down crying and went to get the ring he’d given her and somehow, that was that.”

“Did they ever find out you spied on them?”

“Cliff did, yeah. I don’t think he told her, but when I was leaving for duty and I was, you know, being a man and asking him to take care of everybody and all that, I accidentally quoted him, and he gave me this look like he was thinking about slapping me for a minute there. He didn’t, but I will admit that I shivered when I got that look.”

“It sounds like you do get along with him,” Peggy chuckles.

“We have our moments. He and my mom are more of a…cohesive unit these days, especially since the war, and it’s changed my relationships with both of them. More than I’d like. She used to be Hell on heels, but she’s become pretty judgmental and fretful, always worried something’s going to happen to me. Gets scared as Hell if I go a few days without talking to her.”

He pauses, and is comforted by Peggy’s running her fingers gently through his hair.

“Only time in my life I went more than a week without writing or calling, I was days away from coming back to the States in a box. And when I did come back, I was broken.”

“You aren’t broken, Daniel,” Peggy says, and he regrets having said that at all, because the pain in her voice - in her face - is just as bad as his mother’s was when she first saw the leg - or rather, the lack thereof. He doesn’t know what to say, but he opens his mouth again to try.

“You aren’t,” Peggy stops him emphatically, and leans back to set her mug on the coffee table. He manages to meet her eyes when she sits back up and twines her arms around his neck; he doesn’t expect her to kiss him right then, but of course Peggy Carter is not a woman who works by anyone else’s expectations, and she leans in and fiercely presses her lips against his. Daniel shifts in his seat a little, turning as much of his body as he can in her direction, and lets his arm fall from its soft resting place over her shoulders to her waist. Against what is probably his better judgment - since he wants to have a real relationship and under that premise, it’s far too soon to be letting his hand sit right at the zipper on the back of her dress, let alone press against it - he pulls her closer, as close as he possibly can.

“Well, at least I know I’m doing _something_ right,” he mumbles when their lips break apart for a moment, and she leans her head on his shoulder, laughing. Her hot breath tickles, and he tilts his head towards her. She kisses him again, this time more softly, and only for a second or two.

“And I don’t want to hear anything different.”

“What about when I actually _do_ do something wrong?”

“Daniel, I promise, you will never have to wonder if I disagree or disapprove,” she affirms, her tone strangely sweet for her words, her fingers wandering wistfully about his jaw. “There is too much _else_ to wonder about now to waste energy on that.” 

***

“Daniel?”

It couldn't be her voice waking him up, could it? They'd slept separately, on purpose, hoping that they'd both actually get some well-needed sleep, a circumstance that would not be guaranteed were they to share his bed.

There's a knock. Yes, it's her.

He groans himself awake, rubbing his eyes. The clock reads 8:43. Of course _she's_ up, but why on earth would he need to be? Unless - no, she wouldn't. Not at this hour.

"Is the place on fire?" he tries to joke, turning his head to look at her figure in the doorway.

"No," she replies, a gentle laugh behind the smirk she's starting to give him, and suddenly he doesn't mind being woken up nearly as much.

"There's someone here to see you."

"Someone you can't entertain until I wake up having got enough shut-eye?"

"I think you'll want to get up."

He groans.

"I'll get up, but fair warning, if this turns out to be Angie I just might threaten to shoot someone."

"You've got five minutes."

He grumbles a bit, mostly for show, and she rolls her eyes with a smile before shutting the door. He assumes that casual dress will be acceptable for whomever’s come to visit, and after readying himself, he slips a proper sweater over his black undershirt as opposed to a dress shirt and a vest. The smell of cooking eggs wafts into his room, and he grins as he reaches for his crutch and exits the room. 

He doesn’t need it for long.

As soon as it pads onto the edge of the living room, he hears the shout and drops it.

“Uncle Danny!” Philip exclaims, jumping off one of the chairs that’s been pulled up to the kitchen table and rushing over to him. Daniel leans down just enough to take advantage of the boy’s momentum and pull him up into his arms when Philip crashes into him (as four-year-olds often do.) 

“Hey there, little man!” Daniel beams, relishing the way his nephew’s arms sling a death grip around his neck once he’s lifted him. Both Peggy and Debbie stand in the kitchen smiling, though Peggy’s slightly distracted by her cooking; Daniel bends down to grab his crutch and makes his way over to them, Philip cradled in his arms until they reach the table and he steps off onto his chair. 

“Danny,” his sister says affectionately, and wraps her arms around him.

“Hey, Debbie.”

It’s been a while since they’ve shared a hug this warm, and his realization of that only makes him hug her tighter. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Peggy at the stove, his apron - which is too big for her - slung around her in an almost haphazard way, working on her eggs and smiling brightly. Even though she never turns around to meet his eyes, she realizes he must be looking at her at some point.

“Told you you’d want to get up.”


	6. Project Black Swan

“We don’t _have_ to do this, you know. I can afford to get them a hotel room, at least for a little while,” he says softly, tentatively, sitting down on his bed next to Peggy’s open suitcase. 

Peggy, already in the process of unpacking her things, drops whatever item of clothing she’d been putting into a drawer, not bothering to straighten it out before swiveling around to face him. 

“Do you not want to?”

Her voice is full of a sharp concern that it hurts him to hear, a tone he’s never heard, so unfamiliar that until he sees the disquiet in her eyes, he’s not quite sure it’s Peggy who’s speaking.

“That’s not - I just…don’t want to rush things,” he amends cautiously. “I’m not fond of the thought of having some torrid but fleeting affair, Peggy - with anyone, but especially not with you. I’ve spent so much of the time we’ve known each other hoping we’d eventually become something…more, something different, than what we were, than colleagues or acquaintances, than friends - than _whatever_ exactly it is that we’ve been, because to be honest, I’ve not once been entirely sure.”

“Well, at least that makes two of us,” Peggy murmurs, her uncertainty showing itself in her voice, but her concern seemingly faded. She steps away from the end of the bed and comes to sit next to him, and Daniel notices that she’s twiddling her fingers; awkward is the best descriptor for the way she rests her hands in her lap when she sits down at his right.

“Something that I’ve learned, these past few years…is that the circumstances are not what are most important. They are, well, circumstantial, in the way that the photo of me at Raymond’s club was circumstantial, before you knew of those scars. What is _most_ important is what one does with their circumstances.” 

She pauses, her breath growing shaky and shallow for a moment, and she slips her hand into his, twining their fingers and setting their hands upon his knee, without so much as a glance towards him. 

“However long we hope - however long this - this courtship, or whatever we call what we have begun to become - lasts…is up to us,” she says, her words stark and clear even as she seems to fumble around them; they sound perilously like a torch song, a love song that he’d heard played on the radio many times and yet never listened to for want of remaining as detached as possible from the myriad handicaps and vexations of his own reality. Daniel reaches up with his free hand, to stroke some of Peggy’s fallen hair away from her face and back behind her ear; she obliges his featherlight touch, angling her gaze towards his, though not quite meeting it.

“We will be…whatever we choose to make of us. And we will be that, for as much of our lives as we choose.”

Her voice is just a whisper then, but his heart is pounding as though she’d screamed aloud, and their entwined hands are sweaty and tightly gripping each other. He raises their hands to his lips, grazing the back of hers to press a soft kiss against it. She does meet his gaze then, a smile as gentle as his kiss slinking across her cherry red lips. 

That same gentleness stays drawn to them like moths to flame - a fitting metaphor for both of them in the first place - while she (and her cherry red lips) decimate what little space had remained between them a moment before. 

***

The knock at the door is almost frighteningly aggressive, though it holds no hostility. Daniel turns worriedly towards the door, but Peggy rushes over first, and he just catches her smiling as though she’d just remembered a particularly humorous joke. 

“Who is it?” Philip yelps curiously, throwing his arms over the back of the couch so that he could stand on a cushion and watch Peggy go over to the door. 

“Now, now, no need to break it down,” Peggy says teasingly as she’s opening the door. “Hope you brought something.”

“Of _course_ I brought something! It’s a family housewarming, silly!”

_Angie. Of course. Everything in her life was more theatrical simply by association._

“I know you said there was a kid, but I still brought wine, and Carol and Dot had made some pies; Carol gave me one when I told her where I was goin’.”

She walks in like she owns the place, strutting in next to Peggy with a smile and greeting Daniel with half a hug and a kiss on the cheek before she’s even set anything down. 

“Oh my goodness!” Debbie gasps gleefully, and Daniel turns a confused look to the hallway leading from the living room, where she’s coming from after having dashed back to take a shower. “You’re the girl from the Automat!”

She lightly takes a seat next to her son on the couch, putting a steadying hand at his back. 

“That’s me! Who’s askin’?” Angie replies excitedly, setting the pie down on the counter with haste and properly spinning herself around. She gasps loudly enough for the stage - Daniel could have heard her in the back row - and looks over at him, then back at his sister. 

“This guy is your Danny?” she queries as she heads over to the living room.

“Oh, Lord,” Daniel sighs, half-teasingly, only loud enough for he and Peggy to hear. Not unpredictably, Angie turns back towards him with a suggestive sort of look and asks, “can I call you Danny?”

“No, _Angela,_ you may not,” he retorts, and her countenance sobers a bit.

“Oh, don’t _start_ with Angela.”

“Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

She scoffs playfully, practically twirling towards the couch. She lays her arms on it, right near where Philip’s holding on, and winks at him. The little boy giggles bashfully and sits back down, and she ruffles his hair a bit, making him giggle even more, before turning her gaze over to Debbie. Angie seems gentler than usual as she puts a hand on Debbie’s shoulder and greets her jovially. 

“I should give you that money back-"

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s quite a bit of money, though, and I’m sure you need some.”

“I need some, yeah. Don’t mean I’m the only one who does. I got two incomes and my best friend’s a spy - I’ll manage.”

“You’re not supposed to wave that around, Angie,” Peggy says gently, and though Daniel can tell she means to have a hint of reprimand in her statement, there isn’t any there.

“Also, we aren’t properly _spies,”_ Daniel adds. 

Angie and Peggy both turn gently disapproving gazes back at him, and Angie replies as though she were scolding him.

“You’re sometimes-secret federal agents who engage in espionage on an almost-daily basis. That’s spy enough for me, hotshot.”

***

The interpreter scribbles rapidly, trying to take down all of Dottie’s imprecations. Jack had tried watching him, even though almost none of what he wrote down was in English, mostly for something to dedicate focus to.

The translator was not able to work quite so fast; from the little that had gotten translated so far, they’d gotten little information about Dottie’s mission or Leviathan’s intentions, but quite a bit about Dottie herself. Peggy had been right: she’d be damned difficult to truly weaken. The farthest they’d gotten was getting her to speak Russian, but she still hadn’t relegated herself to speaking with an accent; and they now knew that she’d met Stark, from an offhand aspersion she didn’t seem to be entirely aware that she’d uttered. If she _was_ aware, she didn’t suspect he had anything to do with her current predicament. Which was somewhat true, in that he had absolutely no knowledge of her predicament, let alone his role in enabling it. 

But of course, it was _Howard Stark._ If Leviathan wanted his weapons, there was one surefire way to get close to him, and considering not only his reputation but the fact that Dottie had been willing to kiss Peggy to move her mission forward, Jack had no doubt that getting close to him had been Dottie’s task. 

Not that Howard - or Jack, in his position - would have complained, not unlike most of the men Carter took down…it was a hell of a way to be compromised or dragged into peril - infinitely preferable to proper kidnapping or getting shot. 

Or getting knocked unconscious. 

“Rather croak getting a kiss than a knuckle sandwich,” one of their suspects the year before had said, about his having been incapacitated a la ‘Sweet Dreams’, and Jack, honestly, had to agree. 

Not that that could help them now.

No, they were stuck with observation and interrogation for the time being. 

Observation and interrogation, of an exceptional ballerina who’d left a stellar impression on her past boss when she’d worked as his secretary for two years as she raised enough money to get herself to New York; who’d been intensely intrigued by the Bolshevik Revolution and as a result had charmed the Reverend Superior in charge of her school into allowing her to study Russian rather than French; who’d only decided to move to New York with her artistic aspirations after mourning the death of the soldier to whom she’d been engaged before the war...her cover was unassailable, as was much of her facade - the rest of which could be passed off as entirely reasonable reactions to being taken in for questioning and then taken by her interrogator to a sealed, technologically advanced, eerily bright and eerily homey basement. 

The translator makes an unconfident mumble of the name ‘Captain Thompson’ and Jack stifles his eye-rolling chuckle as he pushes himself out of his seat and heads over. 

“Sir, there was a point at which she was specifically speaking about Misses Carter and Martinelli.”

Jack's words leave his mouth before he can half-heartedly damn himself for feeling the need to say them. 

“ _Agent_ Carter. _Miss_ Martinelli. What was she saying about them?” 

The man’s even more uncomfortable, and though he can relate Jack decides it’s best not to mention it. He’s undermined his own authority a great deal already, in just the short time so far that he’s been Captain, and he wasn’t about to do it more than he thought was truly warranted. 

“Well, sir, Agent Carter she mostly curses in general - blaming her for your believing that she’s done something wrong is really the most specific she gets.”

He pauses. 

“And Ang- Miss Martinelli?” Jack prompts, biting his tongue afterwords. He’d known her (as more than a friend of Carter’s, that is) for barely a week - and they weren’t actually on first-name basis. 

At least, not yet. 

He’d only said Angela that once, when she’d teased him about his grilled cheese, but even though she went by it quite universally, it didn’t feel right to call her Angie at this point in their relationship.

 _Ah, shit._

“She…seems particularly attached to Miss Martinelli. Her contradictory feelings of betrayal and of worry that she’s been coerced or harmed are both rather acute.”

“What’s the timestamp on her talking about that?” Jack inquires, in hopes of confirming or contradicting a hunch, and the translator hands him the original paper with the notes in Russian. He sends back a critical expression before the man realizes that Jack won’t be able to read anything on the paper, and then he takes it back and lays it back on the desk, skimming the page with his finger until he reaches the point of relevance. 

“That began at 1836 hours, sir.”

“And what did the interpreter take down about what she was doing?”

The translator looks even more confused, but he complies.

“She was…touching her lips a lot, she stroked the top of her chest real anxiously a couple of times. Started crying, but very intentionally stopped it...”

So it _had_ been the moment that had come to his mind. She’d seemed especially distressed then, and without understanding a word she was saying he focused on the longing in her voice and her dramatic, emotionally charged movements, and imagined her as Tchaikovsky’s Odette. Picturing again, the slender blonde adorned with the angelically feathery costume that he recalled from his own attendance of one of the New York City Ballet’s performances, he had a disquieting moment of epiphany.

Angie Martinelli was far more involved in this operation than any of his team could have known.


	7. Looks Like She Can Kill

Jack was gonna curse this day for the rest of his goddamned life. He’d reached a breaking point. Had anyone told him a year, a month - hell, a week - ago that he’d be wishing there were _more_ women like Peggy Carter, he’d have laughed in their faces so hard that his chest hurt. 

And yet…here he was.

The chilly air is biting at him like a dog at his heels, and the damned cinema attendant won’t - probably can’t - stop shaking. The ambulance she’s been seated in has rattled beneath her a number of times, and she still hasn’t answered half his questions. He knows that his expression, his body language, his tone, have been getting harsher, but this really is the end of line. He was trying to stop catastrophic happenings - not to slowly and maternally clean up after them. He should be catching this bastard, not trying to keep this poor woman from sobbing. The nurses could do that, couldn’t they? 

At the same time, he understood. He’d shut down in Belarus, panicked so bad that Carter’s goddamn conscience was, truthfully, the only reason he was even alive to be dealing with all this bullshit back here. But she had been the one who had realized that the gas their sadistic suspect had released had a menacing similitude to something of Stark’s, and she and Sousa had always been the best at crime scenes, so he didn’t really have a choice but to have them inside the theatre doing the dirty work. Well, _dirtier,_ that is.

“Please, Miss Roberts, if you can remember anything suspicious that happened today-”

Though she doesn’t seem to be listening to him any longer, the woman curls further into herself, crying harder, and he stops himself, gritting his teeth. For some icing on his poisoned cake, he outwardly startles when that damned blonde (was she a blonde? he wasn’t actually sure) speeds around the corner of the ambulance and comes over to him. He recalls that she hadn’t had a shift at the Automat today, but even though he can’t put a finger on why she’s come, he’s more relieved than he really should be that she has. He’s not relieved, though, that she’s dressed entirely to the nines (professional, like Carter - in fact he could imagine her having borrowed her ensemble from said woman’s closet). Her coat hangs open and she isn’t wearing a scarf - for whatever godforsaken reasons - so the slender silhouette of her maroon (at least, he thinks that’s what that color's called) dress is accentuated. Even _without_ considering that she was working with secret agents, she was dressed to kill.

“Miss Martinelli?” he says inquiringly when she approaches him, coming to stand immediately next to him, and his heart speeds up just a little.

_Goddammit._

“Captain…” Angie replies, and he smiles a tiny bit as he realizes that she’s used only the title in order to prevent herself from calling him _pretty boy_ in front of his witness. She fills in the other blanks before he has to ask her why she’s shown up here.

“Little bird told me you got some women around who could use a little sisterly coaxing,” she whispers, practically in his ear; her arms - well, her coat, but he still breathes a little less easily - meet his as she leans closer. Momentarily he bites his lip to keep from doing anything rash, but then he realizes that he needs to answer her. 

“You volunteering?” he replies softly, trying to look past her rather than directly at her face, and keeping himself from saying anything else in hopes of not saying too much. Angie smiles, a bit suggestively, and leans even closer to him - this time actually putting her mouth up to his ear - and grabs his arm with one hand to help steady herself on her tiptoes. He reflexively grasps her elbow, keeping her in the slightly uncomfortable position of being chest to chest with him, and _dear God,_ she’s too close. 

“Licking my lips,” she affirms coyly. 

“Better live to tell the tale,” he follows quickly, in a teasing tone only a bit less serious than hers.

“That’s sweet of you.”

“Not really. Ten minutes after Carter found out you _didn’t,_ I’d be drifting down the Hudson.”

Angie giggles, and the warm air tickles the skin of his neck, and he silently prays that his cheeks have remained their normal hue. The hope in the prayer doesn’t last long; as she’s pulling away from him to set herself back on her feet, she just barely presses a peck against the meeting of his jaw and his ear, and he has to force himself to let go of her arm right then because he’s creeping closer to his worry that the longer he holds on to her the more chance there is that he might just-

“Catch you later, cowboy,” she says, and reaches into the front pocket of his suit jacket and grabs his notepad and the pen hooked onto it, sending him a subdued grin that he can’t help but affectionately roll his eyes at. 

She’d come dressed to kill - and whether she knew it or not, she was closing in. 

***

“Definitely Ivchenko,” Angie declares as she struts her way into the conference room. “The only suspicious patron the cinema girl saw was a grandfather who was there with a baby in a carriage. Asked for the ol' geezers' room a couple of minutes before everythin' cashed its one-way ticket to Hell in a handbasket.”

“The carriage! The canister seemed to have fallen out of the baby carriage,” Peggy realizes, sitting at even more rapt attention. 

“And I went over the, um, count…not a one is old enough to be a grandparent, ‘cept for a couple that'd went there for a date every Friday afternoon for the past nine years.”

“So he went in, set it off, left, and bolted everyone in there,” Daniel postulates, and Jack nods, tapping his pen against his lips.

“It _would_ have been Dottie,” Peggy adds, and Angie tags onto her.

“That would have been much less suspicious; everyone would have thought she was just a mother with her child, at least until she started leaving.”

“And by then it would have been too late to do anything,” Jack finishes the thought.

“He’s just going to go forward with whatever it is they had planned, then?” Angie presses, and her voice is starting to hold desperation, and it hurts to hear. Jack gulps, and Daniel seems not to know how to answer - but Peggy shakes her head.

“No. No, he can’t. One of them was giving direction. They both would know better than to work with anyone who was disposable; both of them are needed to complete their plan.” 

“The only detail of which we _know_ is killing you,” Daniel points out. 

“Yes, well, let’s not dwell on that - shall we?”

None of the others respond; even Jack knows better than to say that the threat to her life is indeed a major concern. They may not be close, but he knows Peggy Carter pretty well. The more you tell her the odds, the more she’ll push them. Usually, it ended up working out - and damn well - but that didn’t alleviate the danger. One day it might not end so well, and the world would be far worse off for it. 

He hated that he knew that. It had been so much less stressful thinking of her as a titled secretary.

“It won’t do us any good to fear for me rather than save people,” Peggy asserts.

“Peggy’s right,” Angie’s the first to avow, Daniel nodding in agreement. Jack gives a gentle shrug, still wary of voicing enthusiasm about Peggy’s rectitude, but when she suggests that Angie return to the Griffith and look through Dottie’s room thoroughly, his first instinct has him inquire as to what Peggy’s told her about collecting evidence.

***

As Jack loosens his tie, he starts to wonder if Carter can see right through him. There was very little reason she couldn’t oversee this part of her friend’s training, but she’d asked him to do this, and he’d agreed without a thought - a choice he’s starting to worry may end up getting him in trouble or a tight spot or somewhere worse. And this ordeal felt like utterly apt retribution for his treatment of her.

He’d expected Martinelli to wear the air of an actress when she put on Peggy’s uniform, as police work seemed so far out of range of what she was used to, but even though she does seem a bit nervous, she looks just like any other new recruit (save for a few - honestly, inconvenient - details). Carter never looked prudish or starchy with her hair pulled back and her khakis on, and though Angie’s a bit slimmer, the aura is disturbingly similar, even as she focuses keenly on how Jack positions the pistol in her hand. It’s when he’s helping her line up in a booth that he notices that her skin is even softer than he expects, and it sets him even more off guard. The back of her body is warm against him, her stance sets her feet in between his, her fingers curl easily, and her shoulders are so close to the top of his chest she may as well be resting against him. 

And just his luck, she’s about as perceptive as Carter is, too.

“You sure you’ve taught people how to shoot before?” she softly taunts, bringing her elbows back to her side to indicate that she intends to wait for him to answer before continuing. Against Jack’s better judgment, the sliver of a smile he can just barely tell has crept onto her face is reason enough for a chuckle. 

“Never been quite this hands-on,” he tries to retort, even though his voice is gentler than usual; Angie confirms that she’d been smiling, setting the gun down at the booth and doing an about face to look at him directly, an intimacy which is so beyond unnecessary. (And how did she know how to do an about face properly?)

Her eyes are twinkling when they meet his gaze, and she tilts her chin up, and they really shouldn’t standing this close to each other, especially with no one else around. It’s practically painful, in more ways than one.

“With a trainee, or with a woman?” goads Angie, and Jack forces a more arrogant type of laugh.

“You’re even worse than Carter, you know that?” he snaps back, and she immediately retaliates, tacking on an even wider grin for good measure.

“Don’t let _her_ hear you sayin’ that - she’ll knock you out again. Or, send you down the Hudson.”

He rolls his eyes, shoving out a teasing sigh, and she giggles for a moment before she pivots back around to face the firing lines again and slips the gun back into her hand.

“Now help me get my aim right, cowboy.”


	8. Not Just Any Actress

He should have waited outside.

Miriam Fry was not fond of men in the first place - let _alone_ men inside of her establishment. And to be one that had pushed past her, and entirely broken her rules by unceremoniously going upstairs, that had not only made a couple of her girls cry, but had taken one of them into custody and caused greater mayhem than she’d seen in quite a few years...

(He and Daniel had found out, upon speaking with her later, that one of the times Howard had visited had been particularly hectic. He could remember so clearly the disapproving look on her face when she turned to him with her eyes rolling and said that _'of course Peggy and Howard were related, and apparently chaos must run in the family, what a shame, and she’s such a pretty girl, too…she really could get herself a wonderful husband if she wised up…'_

Jack had broken into laughter the moment she was out of earshot, being all too aware that the man who was roughly 98.9 per cent likely to be said wonderful husband had been present for her comment. Daniel’s consequent glare at him had been the weakest yet. 

It wasn’t as though he could argue.)

Miriam Fry, however, could most certainly argue. She had that sort of look on her face; Jack wasn’t sure that it ever left, which was a shame. Running an operation like this, she was obviously quite capable - she was just bitter as well. 

“What exactly are your _intentions_ with Miss Martinelli, Captain Thompson?” she says, _bitterly,_ tapping her pen against her desk. 

“He offered to drive me to work, Missus Fry,” Angie chimes just as she’s coming off the stairs, and Jack feels a bit guilty for not having noticed she was coming. His greeting, though he intends it to be friendly, feels as though it comes out sounding insincere. 

“Whatever happened to your _Danny,_ Angela?” she presses, and Jack bites his lip to avoid chuckling at the, er, alias - or rather, the idea of Angie addressing him _by_ the alias. Sousa had always been very clear that no one was to call him Danny. Perhaps Angie just had a way with everyone. 

At least she was fully sheathed in her coat today; he could see a peek of her seafoam green uniform - which today, she was wearing as a front - at her sternum, but not much else. She was even wearing a Carter-esque hat - one that seemed very similar to that red one Carter wore, save for its gentle pink color. 

Angie pauses pointedly, scrunching her face up a bit. A few tears come to her eyes; Jack reflexively offers his handkerchief, and she gives him a sweet smile before she gingerly takes it and dabs the drops away. 

“Danny, um… _let’s_ just say that Danny ran out of gas.”

Her smile at the matron is visibly forced, and the woman’s sympathy comes quickly - she goes so far as to grab Angie’s hands and insist that she’s better off without him. 

“Oh, Angie! Thank _God_ you’ve not left yet!” comes a cry from the stairwell, and Jack knows that he watches a bit too closely as she twirls herself around to see the other girl.

“What’s up, Carol?” Angie inquires with concern, holding the handkerchief tightly in her clasped hands.

“Have you heard from Dottie?”

“Ain’t she with her uncle?” Angie replies - without missing a beat. 

“Well, I thought so, but I was s’posed to have dinner with the two o’ them last evening, and neither showed. Dottie was gonna come over to get me, but I got no call or anything - they just sort of disappeared.”

“That’s odd. I only just saw her on Friday. Everything seemed fine then. I mean, her uncle’s ill, so I guess fine ain’t the right word, but you get me.”

“Hmm.”

Carol’s face contorts with even more concern, her eyes narrowing as though searching through a library’s card catalogue for a potential solution. 

“Were you gonna have dinner _at_ her uncle’s place?” Angie inquires a moment later, catching the rest of them off guard. Carol nods, shoving one of her hands into her purse; Angie reaches out to hold the purse and make the task of rummaging through it a little simpler, and soon Carol’s pulled out a small agenda book and turned its pages to the previous week. 

“Do you have paper?” she asks Angie, her concerned tentativeness still lingering in her voice, and Jack swiftly pulls his notepad from his suit jacket, opening it to a blank page and handing it to her with a slight smile. She mouths her thanks and, scribbling, copies the address down.

“I’ll see if I can stop by after work, okay, see if there’s something goin’ on?” Angie smiles at Carol, grabbing the notepad back, and her friend relaxes. Angie wraps her into a hug and then bids her good-bye, and Jack’s farewells are short, but not quite curt.

Able to recognize Jack's car, Angie strides towards it; partly out of pride and surprise - and partly for less…gentlemanly reasons - he gives nothing of a protest to her being the one to lead the way down the street. She stops at the passenger door, and leans back against it, crossing her arms and, with a facetious air of drama, tosses some of her hair back behind her shoulder, as she watches Jack approach. Foolishly, and purely for his less gentlemanly reasons, he stands immediately in front of her as he slips his key into the door, savoring the manner in which their chests are rising and falling within inches of each other, and how her eyes are looking up, with her insatiable curiosity and boundless vivacity, into his eyes, and their faces are much too close to each other for the sort of unspoken warmth that was suitable between colleagues...

He unlocks the door, and _of course,_ when he opens the door, and she steps away from the car so that he can open it fully, she moves even closer. This time, though, unlike when she’d shown up at his crime scene, he has the benefit of not being _entirely_ flustered by the soft peck that she bestows upon his cheek before she slides into the passenger seat. 

***

When Jack grabs the handle at his left and begins to open his door, he hears Angie take a very deep, and rather nervous, breath; a glance back over at her reveals that her hands are cradled in her lap, and she seems stiff. 

He shuts the door. 

“You sure you’re okay with doing this?”

His voice is more gentle than he expects or would like, but she seems to lose the littlest bit of tightness in her chest, and he doesn’t mind the worry he’s showing. 

“I know I got training from America’s Best, but this still feels way above my pay grade, cowboy,” she says softly, trying unsuccessfully to make something of a joke of her uneasiness. Jack’s reflexes don’t give him a second to think before one of his hands has moved to grasp hers, and once he realizes, he starts to chew himself out for crossing too many lines - but when he pulls his hand the slightest distance away, one of her hands grabs onto it tightly. His heart skips a beat, but he turns his hand over and sets it on her knee. Angie twines their fingers together, and Jack tries not to look too closely at her and prays that she can’t hear him gulp.

She takes a few more breaths, and then she releases his hand; he’s made more aware of the chill in the air by the light layer of sweat on his palm. Now, Angie’s the first to reach for her door handle, and he gives a forceful hum to stop her. He leans down in his seat, reaching underneath the hem of his dress pants to remove his spare pistol from its holster on his shin. He holds it out to her and nods, and she becomes genuinely more sure of herself as she takes it from him and slips it into her purse.

It’s easier than it really should be for Angie to sell to the complex receptionist that she’s a friend of Dottie’s - though Angie somehow knows well enough to give a description rather than a name, letting the man fill in those blanks with her alias and Ivchenko’s - and he directs them to the same apartment that Carol had written down for Angie. 

Jack's lockpick makes easy work of the unit’s lock, but that seems too suspicious, so Angie kneels down, grimacing at the harshness of the carpet against her thin-stockinged knees. She groans loudly, and Jack puts a hand at the apex of her shoulders to cue her to stand back up. She slips her hand into his and pops up from the floor.

“There’s a rifle aimed at the center of the door. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that it’s got a motion sensor.”

“Valid assumption,” Jack grumbles. “Entirely...valid.”

He sighs.

“Considering what we’re dealing with, the best option is really to leave and figure something else out. At least we have the address now.”

Angie shrugs.

“You’re the boss, cowboy,” she says, careful to only relay a touch of disappointment, but she’s still not eager to follow him back to the stairwell. 

He’s not sure it takes her even a whole second to change her tone and express to the receptionist that neither Ida nor Nicolas was home and _no, she didn’t need him to pass on a message for her, thank you._

“Thanks a bunch, Captain Pretty Boy,” she says quietly as she clacks her heels past him and out the front door; back at the car as she’s anticipating his opening her door, she gasps all of a sudden, and he moves back from the car a bit. She grabs his arm excitedly, and his expression turns to confusion.

“Cowboy,” she says, and her voice sounds as though she’s giving a command, and he’s thoroughly disarmed by the realization that he’d easily and willingly obey a command from her.

_Even worse than Carter._

“Look across the street.”

Some shops, a restaurant with a French name that he most definitely couldn’t pronounce, a newspaper stand, and an apartment complex. 

An apartment complex having an open house for their newly renovated penthouse suites. 

It’d be a long shot, both figuratively and literally, but Jack had a feeling that this was actually going to work. 

***

“Peg, please, calm down,” Daniel says, and though his voice is soothing, she has more trouble than ever actually listening to him. This was about Angie. _Angie,_ of all people!

“This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have gotten her involved in all this.” 

“She’s been doing very well, Peggy-"

“Doing well in training doesn’t equal doing well in the field! We all know that!” she shifts herself around to yelp, and Daniel’s expression is solemn as he looks back up at her from his chair. When she shifts back to her seated position, she realizes just how uncomfortable it is to be sitting on the edge of his desk, but her heart is racing and one of her legs is shaking and the last thing she needs is for the agents on the other side of the room to see her trip and fall. 

“Thompson does well in the field, and he was picking her up, so they should be with each other. Besides, remember back, well, you know when? You only said a couple frantic words and she jumped _all over_ helping you. Sold one hell of a story to us. A story that held water, just like what she sold to Dottie. Angie’s been _great_ in the field so far.”

Peggy purses her lips, still wrapped in her worry. A gentle kiss on her cheek snaps her out slightly; Daniel physically stops her from impeding him from going to make both of them coffee, and returns a couple of moments later.

Peggy sighs, but the mug is warm in a mild, sort of welcoming way, and she relaxes her shoulders a bit as she takes it into her hands. Soon after, Jack’s chuckle becomes audible near the elevator, and Daniel just barely grabs her mug from her before she launches to her feet and rushes in that direction. Angie’s look as she approaches is of confusion, but she reciprocates the enthusiasm with which Peggy hugs her. 

“Where the _bloody hell_ have you been?” Peggy exclaims, a maternal, scolding consternation carried within her enquiry. Peggy spots Jack’s expression, one of satisfaction, and it’s her turn to be confused. Angie pulls back tentatively, and her whole face is lit with her smile.

“Following a lead,” she simpers, and when Peggy’s brow furrows, Angie turns to Jack with an expectant look. He pulls his notepad from his pocket and flips through it to a certain page and then hands it to Peggy.

“An address?”

“Not just _any_ address,” professes Angie, and Peggy hears Daniel coming to join them, stopping closely enough to listen but not actually walking the entirety of the distance it would take to be standing with them.

“Ivchenko and Dottie’s address.”


	9. Garden of Earthly Delights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a somewhat suggestive play with the name of the [painting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights) by Hieronymous Bosch of the same name.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments (and kudos, of course) are always appreciated! xx

Peggy takes a deeper breath than she’s had to in a while as she stands herself back up to her full height, extending her arm down to Angie and helping her up as well. They’re both laughing, and the absolutely astonished looks on Jack and Daniel’s faces only make them laugh harder. 

Peggy’s never been nearly so content not to clinch a training match. Of all the people she may have had difficulty getting off balance…that it was Angie with whom she had the most trouble was invariably comforting. 

“What sort of roles do you _play_ exactly, Martinelli?” asks Jack as the women head over towards the door of the training gymnasium, near which he and Daniel are leaning against the wall.

“Well, if I told you, it wouldn’t leave much to the imagination, now would it, pretty boy?” Angie says with a teasing sort of sneer, and Peggy follows her eyes back to Jack, whose surprise becomes compounded with…something odd that Peggy can’t actually place - a pursed-lip sort of smile that he very seldom wears, and yet no response to Angie’s pretty boy comment. He’d always argued whenever it’d been said before - perhaps it had been a matter of putting a prettier face to the words. Angie had a way with people, even when she wasn’t acting. It was hard to have one’s guard up around her - Peggy would know. 

Besides, there was a reason the Soviet Union was training _girls,_ wasn’t there? 

_Good thing Dottie’d came after me rather than Jack._ He _would probably be dead._

Peggy's been focused more on Angie, but now she notices that he’s tense, but not on guard, which is markedly odd for Jack.

He had said that Angie had done well that morning (even regarding her apprehension towards fieldwork, which was entirely usual); and with the stakes as high as theirs...it said a lot that Angie had been the one to check for anything suspicious at Ivchenko’s place, and that she had thought to ask for the address in the first place. 

_Was it really so odd to have another woman around? Even Thompson, at this point, had some idea that they were not so different than men._

Although…it seemed less about that than about Angie - after all, his cheeks were pink, as though he’d been a more active participant of their working out, rather than a spectator. 

However, he was lucky not to have the sheen of sweat that they did - or perhaps _they_ were the luckier ones, having the SSR showers all to themselves for roughly half an hour. Peggy spends another couple moments laughing at Angie’s yelp when the water comes out cold, and in retaliation Angie holds her hands out to gather water and throw it at her, and eventually most of the soap only makes it off their bodies because they’re playing around like they were young girls, rather than grown women who knew how to shoot pistols and knock people out with nothing but a low neckline and a kiss. 

***

Daniel puts the car in park, and Peggy pulls out her compact to check her lipstick, more as a reflex than an actual task.

“So, what’s the story?” she asks as she slips it back into her purse. 

“Come again?”

“The story, you know. How long we’ve been together, why we’re looking for a place, all that. They’ll probably ask, so we should have our bases down.”

Daniel’s forehead creases in consideration, and Peggy’s quite sure it shouldn’t be as attractive as it seems. 

“What’s reasonable? Six months, maybe? Long enough to be moving in together but not married yet?”

Peggy laughs.

“Okay, that’s fair,” Daniel amends, chuckling a bit. “We’ve jumped every gun in the possession of the SSR, I get that. But does that seem at least _believable?”_

Her laugh still in her lungs and on her lips, Peggy just leans over and kisses his cheek.

“I’m taking that as a yes, just so you know,” he says softly, and pushes open his door. She meets him at his right side when they’re both on the sidewalk, slinging her purse over her right arm to make it easier to hold his hand as they head to the landlord’s office.

***

“This really is a _lovely_ apartment,” Peggy coos, tightening her grasp around Daniel’s arm as she watches for the landlord’s reaction. It feels too right to be doing this, too right to walk around with her hands around Daniel’s forearm, both of them walking the same pace without thinking about it, having only to fudge details of their lives to convince this edgy businessman of their relationship’s longevity…it felt more natural than she could have possibly expected.

“Great place for startin’ a family,” the landlord Allan buzzes; he shoves his elbow out from himself but, having realized that it was perhaps not wise to set Daniel off balance, looks more awkward than friendly (which seems to be a facet of his personality, if the hour they’ve spent with him was any true indication.)

Peggy nods gently at him, primarily in hopes of not seeming rude, as she leans against the low and wide windowsill in the master bedroom, giving Daniel the chance to rest that he isn’t going to ask for. 

“You did say this apartment connects to the roof, yes?” she asks.

“Yes, ma’am, it does,” answers Allan enthusiastically. 

“End o' the hallway down the left, that door opens with the same key as the front. Last lady o’ the house put up a real nice garden, if you’d like to see.”

She tilts her head up against Daniel’s chin.

“I’ll just be back in a moment, darling. You stay here and take a bit of a break, why don’t you?” she says softly, casually, with an intent that only Daniel hears. Putting the hand she’d had behind his back upon his knee, Peggy stands herself up and smiles sweetly at the landlord. 

“Would I just love to see the garden!” 

Daniel’s hand leaves her hip reticently, and she’s sure that his gaze doesn’t until she leaves the room; she can tell the complex hasn’t had many problems with security: though Allan had mentioned that the door outside opened with the key, it isn’t locked. The garden is quite impressive, and surprisingly lush, for the tail end of winter, a fact of which she suspects the landlord’s not aware. She takes a number of prolonged looks at the plants and at the city below and beyond them, not particularly worried that he will become annoyed; they’d shown a good bit of enthusiasm throughout this consultation, and he’d seemed to pick up that they intended to buy the place. 

Daniel nods at her when she returns to his side, and without her even thinking about it, Peggy’s hands come to rest lightly on his shoulder. 

“It’s almost immediately across, only a couple floors down - I don’t doubt you could make the shot.”

Allan, of course, has noticed their whispering, and she can feel the vibrations of the nervous tapping of his shoe. Seeking to assuage his anxiety, he takes care to remind them of some of the comforts of the penthouse. 

“Gots heatin’, carpetin’, a television, two baths ’n all. Prolly a heftier price ’n you’s had before, but with just the first two grand, you two could be sleeping ‘ere tonight.”

“Startin’ tha’ family,” Daniel mouths teasingly, mimicking the landlord’s earlier proposal, and Peggy rolls her eyes. 

“You really sold ‘er with the garden,” he says aloud, gesturing across the room as he reaches into his suit coat and pulls out his checkbook. Allan’s rushed over with his pen before Peggy’s able to pull hers from her purse, and the ink’s only just dried by the time Daniel’s trading him the check for the keys.


	10. Follow the Diner Girl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, you guessed it...Follow the Girls was a play, which premiered at the Broadhurst Theatre of New York City in 1945, as was Annie Get Your Gun, which premiered on Broadway in May 1946, on the 16th, which was a little over a week after that first V.E. Day celebration.
> 
> History, guys. History.
> 
> ALSO AGENT CARTER WAS RENEWED MY LIFE WELL AT LEAST MY WEEK HAS BEEN MADE
> 
> I am so excited!!!!!! <3

Philip’s tiny hands clasp Peggy’s arm tightly, holding her (in theory) where she stands near the counter she’s sat him on.

“Do you _have_ to go?” he whines, glancing between her and Daniel. 

“It won’t be long, little man, remember?” Daniel reminds in a voice that’s supposed to be reassuring, but the child is too focused on the suitcases he’s setting on the floor by the door to care much for his uncle’s reassurance. 

“They’ll be back before you know it,” Debbie says, looking up and over at him from her seat at the kitchen table.

“Nuh- _uh._ We’re saying good-bye to them, Mommy. I’m gonna know they’re gone ‘cause I’m gonna be seein’ them leave.”

She purses her lips; Peggy and Daniel share a telling glance. If Peggy has any word on it, Philip _definitely_ takes after Daniel. _Or, well, his maternal grandparents,_ she supposes.

Peggy chuckles, touching his nose affectionately. 

“It really _won’t_ be long.”

She leans a bit closer and whispers to him.

“It’ll be just as boring for us as it will be for you. We’ll all do something fun when we get back, hmm? Maybe we can go see Miss Angie...”

His eyes light up.

“Can I get mac and cheese and a malt?” 

“Oh, I don’t know. Debbie, what do you say?”

Debbie chuckles, her eyes meeting Peggy’s with a grateful smile. 

“We’ll have to see. If you cause a lot of fuss tomorrow…” she wags her finger at Philip, and he starts to bounce a bit.

“I won’t! I won’t cause any fuss at _all,_ Mommy! I promise!” he exclaims, looking back to Peggy for backup. She winks at him and he thrusts his arms as far around her neck as he can manage - which isn’t far, of course, but in a case such as this it was the thought that mattered. She pulls him into her arms, holding him up in a hug for a moment before bringing him over to say his farewell to Daniel. 

His grasp stays tight on his uncle’s collar, even when Daniel puts him down, but a light stroke of Peggy’s fingers through his hair turns out to be enough to facilitate Daniel’s release.

Debbie walks over and hugs them good-bye, and Peggy is surprised by the intimacy of the embrace. Both Debbie and Philip had adjusted unexpectedly well to her being around. For Philip, she presumed it was mostly a matter of enjoying another adult around to lavish him with attention, but she was not sure where Debbie’s ease had come from. Whatever the reason, the ease alone was reassuring, practically a gesture of welcoming her into their family. A nerve-wracking idea, truly…but not one that was unpleasant, nor unfathomable. 

_Jumping every gun in the possession of the SSR, indeed…_

***

“I didn’t know you were such a good cook, English,” Angie smiles, gently taking the champagne Jack offers her, and Peggy’s subsequent smile comes with a small chuckle.

“I do my best,” she replies, sitting back down in between Daniel and Angie at the large table, an air of teasing in her voice and the acceptance of her own champagne afterwards. “I’d been a bit out of practice, but I’ve gotten back in the swing this past week.”

Daniel’s arm had already come to rest on the back of her chair during dinner, and as she adjusts her position a bit, she leans against him more distinctly. Jack finishes pouring the last of the champagne and slides one of the glasses over to Daniel. He gives a short salutatory raise of his own flute and a mischievous grin at the others as he tilts the lip of it back towards his mouth.

“Not so fast, cowboy,” smirks Angie, and he stops as though he’d been expecting her to say something. He takes advantage of the jovial manner of their dinner conversation and clears his throat dramatically. 

“Okay, let’s see…what can I - ah, yes. Here’s to the groom…” 

“Oh, you arse,” Peggy exclaims good-naturedly as he stops himself, the joke being made and all four of them laughing together.

“Okay, okay, so that was a wee bit premature,” Jack concedes teasingly.

“Give ‘im a promotion and an actress to get sweet on, now he _really_ thinks he’s sharp,” Daniel teases back, laughing even harder when Jack returns to him a glare that’s been sent in the other direction many times.

“Oh, shut up, Sousa,” Jack retorts, more with a smirk than anything resembling a sneer. “As I was not actually saying…There are a couple toasts that my unit and I were real fond of back in Japan, so I’ll see if they work so I don’t have to think too hard right now. And you two were in the field, too,” he says to Peggy and Daniel, pointing at them both seemingly as a result of reflex, "you’ve got to have some.”

They nod in unintentional unison, and Jack clears his throat again.

“Here’s to those who wish us well; as for the rest, they can go to Hell. Here’s to the man who - here’s to the agent,” he corrects himself, and Peggy and Angie exchange a teasingly impressed glance that he pretends to scoff at. “Here’s to the _agent_ who takes the pledge, who keeps their word and does not hedge, who won’t give up and won’t give in.”

“Till the last one’s out and there’s no more gin,” Peggy finishes, and they all raise their champagne flutes a bit higher. “There’s many a toast I’d like to say, if only I could think it, so fill your glass to anything and, thank the Lord, I’ll drink it!”

The gazes turn to Daniel; Peggy revels in his fingers’ slight touches at the back of her neck, the hand of hers not holding her champagne having just moments ago set itself on his thigh.

“Steady your glasses - here comes the gale. Batten down the hatches and lean well over the rail.”

That had been one of Bucky’s favorites, and ultimately one of Steve's as well, Peggy remembers, and her laugh this time is not quite as lighthearted. She’s distracted from her vague, dreary thoughts as Angie almost immediately puts a hand out in front of Jack to stop him as he’s about to finish their toast.

“Hey, us rising starlets do _more_ than just break legs.”

“I indeed was of the impression hearts were occasionally involved as well,” Peggy jests, and Angie rolls her eyes.

“That’s another ten cents right there,” she jokes in turn, and then raises her glass higher above her head.

“A round to the best: may we never get less. A round to the worst: may they die of thirst. Amen,” she declares with feigned seriousness.

“So that’s how you get your kicks in the theatre, huh? Talk about knocking people off?” Jack goads with a smile. 

“Comments a man who carries two guns on his person as part of his job,” Angie snaps back, and Peggy doesn’t see that she needs even a second to think to do so. 

“All _I_ need is lipstick and a swift kick, remember?”

“I’d almost rather not.”

“Almost,” Angie repeats in a quiet, curious voice, squinting up at him. He meets her glance for a moment, but doesn’t give a response, only stretches his arm out across the table.

“Cheers.”

***

“Oh, bloody hell,” Peggy groans, and sits herself back from the window, setting down her rifle, and Angie’s head snaps up to look down the wall at her.

“What?” asks Jack, concern in his voice, and puts down his beer. 

“Movement in the blinds. Someone’s there. I can’t take the shot now.”

“Creepy gent walking suspiciously fast into the building,” comments Angie, sitting in the window seat a few feet further down the wall and turning to look out the expansive window, first across to the closed blinds of Fennhoff's flat and then down to the street below. “Hand at his left hip, pretty sure he’s armed.”

“Leviathan is closing ranks,” Daniel muses. “They’re out of contact with Dottie, so everything’s getting all wacky. She’s got to be at the center of whatever it is they’re doing.”

Jack’s expression creases with realization, but he doesn’t say anything. 

“Headquarters to Chief Thompson, hello?” Peggy urges. 

“Stark,” he answers bluntly. “They’re putting _Stark_ at the center. Dottie’s already there - we already know that it makes the most sense for her to be the one to get close to Stark. Carter, you said that the virulent gas released in the theater was similar to something you know Stark to have invented, but…”

A shocked silence is sitting in the room, but Peggy manages to respond, thank God.

“Ivchenko - um, Fennhoff, that is - took something. Item No. 17. We still don’t know what that was, we didn’t know tit from tat with most of Howard’s inventions in the first place, but if that’s the Midnight Oil that was used at Finow…if they were to successfully release that,” she says, her voice markedly fearful. “I don’t know how much was made, I don’t know how much they have, but it would take perhaps a matter of days for all of New York City to be brutally murdered.”

“And if Stark is the one who releases it…” Angie starts, following Peggy’s thought process.

“Even if the SSR, or anyone, for that matter, _is_ able to stop any of this…” Peggy continues, “he’ll be known as the perpetrator, there wouldn’t be another way to see it. Leviathan would be free to do with it as they pleased as long as Howard’s being considered responsible.”

Daniel sighs, leaning his head into his hand and momentarily locking his jaw in frustration. 

“We’ll have to get to Stark first, _before_ they find him.”

Jack scoffs - it's disheartened, but not cruel. 

“Stark’s _butler_ doesn’t even know where he is. We’ve sent people to every known property and haunt of his on the East Coast, tracked every known alias and more across the world. How exactly are we supposed to find him now, Sousa? He knows we’re looking for him.”

Angie’s reaction to Jack’s declarations swell into a chuckle, and though he doesn’t seem to be able to manage a glare at her, his consequent look of confusion holds little fondness. 

“He’s not on his own property, let alone his own dime,” she says, looking towards him with a little grin.

“Yeah, Martinelli, we know that.”

She rolls her eyes at his frustrated reply; Peggy’s curiosity and Daniel’s are of a less aggressive sort, not that that’s anything new. Angie’s refusal to change her tone to his aggression is, though. Even Peggy seemed to temper herself when Thompson wasn’t listening, but then again, she was used to dealing with people who had badges. Angie, however, had the benefit of being unpracticed at communication with higher-level government employees. 

“But if he’s not on his own dime, and the only people whose names we have that he might ask for help haven’t a clue where he is, then _who,_ Captain Pretty Boy, is he staying with?”

Eyebrows raised like she’s selling him something and the nascence of a smirk on her lips, Angie lets him have a moment to process before she continues. 

“This is _Howard Stark_ we’re talking about. He’s with a woman.”

“Exactly, Angie, this _is_ Howard Stark we’re talking about. He’s been gone for too long for it to have been only _one_ woman,” Peggy says, not letting much opposition slink into her tone even though her eyes seem disappointed with that result. From what Angie knew about Howard from her certainly confirmed the challenges of Angie’s idea: how were they supposed to find a woman that Howard was with when he’d find a way underneath any skirt he could find that wasn’t Peggy’s? 

What her colleagues seemed not to be realizing was that she was also a woman who had - albeit very little - espionage training. A woman that Howard Stark had never met, and who had multiple excuses to weasel her way into his world. 

“Which means we don’t need to track down a woman,” she replies, trying to let just enough suggestiveness hang in the air so as to let Peggy know what she’s got up to thinking.

“And brings us back to tracking _him_ down.” 

“Men who don’t own belts are pretty easy to catch with their trousers down when you know where to put the bait.”

Peggy fully turns herself towards the rest of the room and gets off the chair she’d been on so as to stand and look Angie in the eye - Angie’d expected she’d at least stand up. 

“That’s not happening.”

“‘Annie, Get Your Gun’ is coming up, remember?” Angie ignores her.

“What does that-"

“Everything, English. Everything. Major event, right? Bunches of parties after, all sorts of places. The place to be this weekend, yeah? And if any of you,” Angie gestures around the room, “get me, y’all can ‘Follow the Girls’ to the Stork right after.”

“Oh, right, Broadhurst gave you-" Peggy realizes with a gasp, moving back to her seat next to Daniel.

“I’ve _got_ an invitation to the places to be, and don’t a grand old party like that sound _just_ like the sort of show Stark would make it back to the city for?”

They’re all understanding her now, though even Peggy’s expression indicates she finds this just a bit outlandish - but English would come along. She had to. 

Jack, though, seems to already be almost on board, taking in the sight of the excited Angie with a look that made it seem he was regretting not agreeing with her in the first place, even though he still pushes to actualize the plan.

“But then what? The plan is to distinguish yourself enough at a Broadway event to make sure you’re _the one_ of a few hundred girls he decides to let take him home? Forgive me for not thinking that’s the most _realistic_ plan.”

Angie barely registers the comment, just raising her eyebrows at him again, and she watches with a restrained curiosity as she makes him sit in his discomposure for a moment. 

“Have you taken a look at me, cowboy?”

Daniel and Peggy chuckle knowingly, predicting correctly the upcoming moment during which Jack visibly works to avoid turning his gaze away from Angie’s face and tries to give her a markedly displeased look in return for her prideful, almost taunting one. He fails, but she’s _just_ nice enough not to inform him of that; and whether he gave his focus permission to relinquish control to her barely-half-buttoned blouse and her cocked hips or not, they only served to enforce the point she was seeking to make. And she’ll damn well make some use of that while she still could.

“Give me an inch, and I’ll make a bathing suit out of it. So what do you say: we gonna whistle dixie, or are we actually gonna take this shot?”


End file.
